Worcestershire Sauce

Every Parsi pantry I know has a bottle of “Worcester sauce,” as we call it in Bombay. It might seem odd, but less so when you learn the nineteenth-century Indian origins of this English seasoning staple. Lea & Perrins, grocers and chemists in the town of Worcester, were asked to make up a recipe brought back from Bengal. It contained tamarind, molasses, soy sauce, anchovies, vinegar, chiles, cloves, and cinnamon, the ingredients for a liquid chutney. Worcester sauce entered Parsi cuisine through the British connection and never left.